Friday, May 10, 2013

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The U.S. military has alerted two elite military units in Europe to be on standby if needed to respond to a deteriorating security situation in Tripoli, Fox News has learned.

In recent days both the U.S. embassy and British embassy in Libya have removed non-essential staff from their embassies.

A specialized Marine unit based in Moron, Spain, is in the process of being repositioned closer to Libya; and in Stuttgart, Germany, a special operations force assigned to AFRICOM has been placed on heightened alert.

The Obama administration denied Republican accusations of a cover-up in last year's deadly attack in Libya, moving on Friday to defuse a renewed political controversy after a news report said memos on the incident were edited to omit references to a CIA warning of an al Qaeda threat.

ABC News reported emails between the White House, State Department and intelligence agencies about the Benghazi attack went through 12 extensive revisions and were scrubbed clean of warnings about a militant threat.

The ABC report came as Republicans in Congress have stepped up efforts to criticize the Obama administration's response to the attack by suspected Islamist militants, with a growing focus on the role of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a potential Democratic presidential contender in 2016.

The grandson of murdered civil rights leader Malcolm X, Malcolm Shabazz, who was convicted as a child of manslaughter and arson in the death of his grandmother, has died outside the United States, family friend Terrie Williams said.

"I'm confirming, per U.S. Embassy, on behalf of the family, the tragic death of Malcolm Shabazz, grandson of Malcolm X. Statement from family to come," Williams posted late Thursday on her Facebook page.

Media reports said Shabazz, in his late 20's, died in Mexico, but the circumstances were not confirmed.

German prosecutors said on Friday they had arrested two Dutch people suspected of involvement in a global cyber theft of $45 million from two Middle Eastern banks.

On Thursday U.S. prosecutors said a criminal gang had withdrawn the money from cash machines in 27 countries.

The Duesseldorf prosecutor's office said a 35-year-old male and a 56-year-old woman had been caught on February 19 withdrawing 170,000 euros in Duesseldorf using Bank of Muscat credit cards. In total, $2.4 million dollars had been withdrawn in seven German cities.

"We have arrested two Dutch people in Germany who apparently took part in this crime," a spokesman for the office said.

A paramedic in West, Texas, has been arrested for possession of an explosive device, a federal official said on Friday, but it was not immediately clear whether there was a connection to a deadly explosion last month at a fertilizer plant in the town.

Texas officials also announced on Friday that they had opened a criminal investigation into the April 17 explosion that killed 14 people and injured about 200 others.

The man arrested was Bryce Reed, said Franceska Perot, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

A source familiar with the matter said it was not clear that the arrest was linked to the blast at West Fertilizer Co.

Thousands of people have flocked to the Omusati Region out of curiosity to view a small piece of meteorite that landed in a mahangu field in the village of Oshika, in Onesi Constituency, yesterday morning.

The incident created fear and panic among villagers who suggested the 'strange object' had something to do with the recent commotion over the 12 South African aircraft that were released after days of grounding at Ondangwa Airport. The aircraft of South African origin were grounded for several days and then sent back to South Africa, because they had no permits to use Namibian airspace.

People who came from all over the five northern regions, including the Kunene Region, flocking to Oshika, expressed fears that the tourists may have had something to do with the 'strange' object that fell in the mahangu field of Andreas Kamafo Ningilenimo.

The proliferation of hacking tools known as zero-day exploits is raising concerns at the highest levels in Washington, even as U.S. agencies and defense contractors have become the biggest buyers of such products.

White House cybersecurity policy coordinator Michael Daniel said the trend was "very worrisome to us."

Asked if U.S. government buying in the offensive market was adding to the problem, Daniel said more study was needed. "There is a lot more work to be done in that space to look at the economic questions...so we can do a better job on the cost-benefit analysis," he said.

Suspected Islamists carried out three attacks on soldiers from Mali and Niger in northern Mali on Friday, injuring one Malian soldier and leaving at least five suicide bombers dead, a spokesman for Mali's army said.

The attacks took place between 4 and 5 a.m. in Menaka and Gossi, near Gao - the first major town freed from the control of Islamist fighters during a French-led military intervention earlier this year.

"The first attack targeted Nigerien soldiers in Menaka. A car bomb entered the (military) camp, but the soldiers ... destroyed the vehicle which exploded," Lieutenant Colonel Souleymane Maiga told Reuters.

A bomb exploded outside a police station in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi in the early hours of Friday, damaging the building and shattering the windows of a school opposite but causing no injuries, a police official said.

Around the same time, about 4 a.m., a second police station was hit by a smaller explosive device that may have been a grenade, a witness said. No injuries were reported there either.

Police stations have been struck with explosives at least four times in the past month in Benghazi, the second largest city in Libya.

As post-Arab Spring Egypt grapples with violence, instability and a troubled economy, more Egyptians say they're yearning for the days when Hosni Mubarak ruled -- and his supporters are saying "we told you so!"

The video shows the group beating the victim with wooden chairs, as well as punching and kicking him repeatedly on the ground. Edward Stanley can be heard to narrate, 'The s**t just got real here' as he videos the beating on his phone - which he later uploaded himself.

A woman has been found alive trapped in the rubble of the Bangladesh clothing factory 17 days after the disaster that has claimed more than 1,000 lives, it emerged today.

Rescuers found the woman, named Reshma, after hearing groaning coming from the basement of the eight-storey Rana Plaza, the Daily Star newspaper said.

Incredibly, she did not have significant injuries and has been given biscuits and water by rescuers, it added. They were preparing to break a large slab when the 'miracle' happened.

A rescuer said: 'As we made an announcement before starting to break the slab asking whether there was anyone alive in there, we heard someone groan.'
She told them 'in a feeble voice' her name was Reshma and that she was 'not much hurt'.

A nurse in a hospital that held France's only confirmed case of the SARS-like coronavirus that has killed 18 people has been admitted to hospital in northern France on suspicion on being infected herself, French health officials said on Friday.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) raised the number of cases confirmed worldwide to 33 after Saudi Arabia said that two people who were admitted to hospital there in April had been determined by laboratory analysis to be infected.

There is no evidence so far of sustained human-to-human transmission of the coronavirus. But health experts are concerned about clusters of new possible cases of nCoV, which started in the Gulf and spread to France, Britain and Germany.

No human to human transmission?...What about the family member back in February, who caught coronavirus from a Family member?

British officials say a mysterious virus related to SARS may have spread between humans, as they confirmed the 11th case worldwide of the new coronavirus in a patient they say probably caught it from a family member.

According to Britain's Health Protection Agency, the latest patient is a U.K. resident with no recent travel to any of those countries but who had close personal contact with an earlier case. The patient may also have been at greater risk of infection due to an underlying medical condition and is currently in intensive care at a Birmingham hospital.

"Although this case provides strong evidence for person-to-person transmission, the risk of infection in most circumstances is still considered to be very low,"

In Syria's eastern province of Deir al-Zor, a network of tribes and smugglers has exploited the chaos of war to create an illicit oil trade that makes European hopes of buying crude from President Bashar al-Assad's opponents a distant prospect.

Powerful Sunni Muslim tribes have deployed armed fighters around oil production facilities and pipelines that have fallen under their control and set up smuggling and trade deals, according to sources in the province including rebels, an oil company employee and people with ties to the tribes.

Deir al-Zor is critical to Syrian oil output that has more than halved in the past two years of fighting. The hijacking of the oil industry by tribes complicates Western efforts to help the Syrian opposition fund itself and will make any future reconstruction even more difficult.

An Army major and his wife pleaded not guilty on Thursday to federal charges alleging the couple abused their three foster children by withholding food and water, making the children eat red pepper and assaulting them to the point of breaking their bones.

Dressed in full military uniform, John Jackson appeared with his wife Carolyn Jackson in federal court in Newark, New Jersey on 17 counts of endangerment, assault and conspiracy.

A trial date was set for July 8, and each of the Jacksons was allowed to remain free on $250,000 bail.

Prosecutors say the alleged crimes took place in 2010 while the family was living at the Picatinny Arsenal in Rockaway Township. Both John and Carolyn Jackson have denied the charges.

Just a day after the CIA chose to bypass a spy for their top position because of her waterboarding past, the name of the man they chose instead was leaked on Twitter despite his still being undercover.

The government is remaining mum, but Francis Archibald is likely the next spy chosen to head the Central Intelligence Agency’s National Clandestine Service.

‘New head of #CIA clandestine service was head of #LatinAmerica Division since ca 2011. Francis ‘Frank’ Archibald, 57,’ tweeted former Washington Post assistant editor John Dinges on Wednesday.

Blueprints for the first-ever plastic gun produced on a 3-D printer, that can pass through metal detectors, have been downloaded over 100,000 times since it was posted to the web on Monday.

Designs for the 'Liberator' pistol were posted online by Defense Distributed but on Thursday the U.S. State Department ordered the website to take down the blueprints, on the basis that the plans could violate export regulations.

The blueprints, that could be produced on 3-D printers costing as little as $1,000, were seen as a breakthrough because no one has previously designed such a weapon that could withstand the pressure of firing modern ammunition.

Greek youth unemployment rose above 60 per cent for the first time in February, reflecting the pain caused by the country's crippling recession after years of austerity under its international bailout.

Greece's jobless rate has almost tripled since the country's debt crisis emerged in 2009 and was more than twice the euro zone's average unemployment reading of 12.1 percent in March.

While the overall unemployment rate rose to 27 per cent, according to statistics service data released on Thursday, joblessness among those aged between 15 and 24 jumped to 64.2 percent in February from 59.3 percent in January.

Jiervon Bartlett (top right) and Nayed Hoque (bottom right), both 15, knocked Paula Castle, 85, to the ground and snatched her bank cards in Greenford, west London. The pair then used her bank cards to buy takeaways, mobile phone top-ups and Nike trainers. They were initially charged with murder but pleaded guilty to manslaughter shortly before they were due to go on trial. Mrs Castle is pictured centre and left, on CCTV moments before the attack.

Scandal-hit security firm G4S is to be responsible for protecting the world’s most powerful men and women after to winning a contract to stand guard at next month’s G8 summit.

The much-criticised firm made such a mess of providing security of the London Olympics last year that the army had to be drafted in to keep the event safe.

But today ministers insisted the company had learned the lessons of last summer’s fiasco and could cope with preventing an attack on the leaders of the world's eight wealthiest countries at the summit in Northern Ireland.

David Cameron last night allowed ministers to vote against the Queen’s Speech as he struggled to contain a growing Tory mutiny on the issue of Europe.

In an extraordinary development, Downing Street sources said Tory MPs would be given a free vote next week on a backbench amendment to the Speech that expresses ‘regret’ about the lack of legislation for a referendum on Europe.

The move came as senior Tories ignored the Prime Minister’s pleas to pipe down on the issue in the wake of last week’s elections, when UKIP gave the Tories a bloody nose.

The death toll from the Rana Plaza disaster in Bangladesh rose above 1,000 victims on Friday, as work crews continued clearing debris from the wreckage site of the building following what is considered the deadliest accident in the history of the garment industry.

The death toll, now at 1,021, has been rising quickly in recent days, and will likely keep climbing, as work crews using heavy machinery are now removing rubble from some of the most heavily damaged sections of the building. Five garment factories operated inside the structure and at least 3,000 people were reportedly working inside when the building collapsed on the morning of April 24.

Located in an industrial suburb of Dhaka, the national capital, Rana Plaza exemplified many of safety problems plaguing a Bangladeshi garment industry that is now the world’s second-leading exporter, trailing only China. Authorities in Bangladesh now say the building was illegally constructed, with permits obtained through political influence. The owner, Sohel Rana, now in jail, was illegally adding upper floors to structure at the time the building collapsed, officials said.

Declaring the US drone strikes in the tribal areas as a blatant violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty, unlawful and a war crime, the Peshawar High Court (PHC) on Thursday ruled that the government and security forces, under constitutionaland legal obligations, shall have the right to shoot down the unmanned aircraft entering Pakistan’s airspace or attacking its territory.

A two-member bench comprising PHC Chief Justice Dost Muhammad Khan and Justice Musarrat Hilali announced a 22-page judgment in four identical writ petitions filed against the US drone strikes in the tribal belt bordering Afghanistan. The petitioners had requested the court to direct the government to stop the drone strikes and order security forces to shoot down the drones entering the Pakistani territory.

Announcing the verdict, the chief justice ruled that under the 1973 Constitution, particularly its Article 199, the court was under obligation to safeguard and protect the life and property of Pakistanis and also any person living for the time being in Pakistan.

More than two weeks after a factory collapsed in Bangladesh, trapping workers in a mangled concrete heap, the death toll has surpassed 900.

Authorities pulled more bodies from the rubble, bringing the number of people killed to 931, Bangladesh's national news agency BSS reported Thursday. The April 24 collapse occurred in Savar, a suburb of the capital, Dhaka.

Rescue workers saved more than 2,400 people in the aftermath of the collapse, but have focused on using heavy machinery to uncover bodies buried beneath the ruins.

A Tunisian, who authorities believe radicalized one of the suspects held in Canada on charges of plotting to blow up a passenger train, has been arrested in New York on unrelated counts, according to authorities who said he wanted to commit acts of terror in the United States.

Ahmed Abassi was arrested last month and charged in a newly unsealed indictment with two counts of making false statements to immigration authorities while applying for a work visa and green card.

"As alleged, Ahmed Abassi had an evil purpose for seeking to remain in the United States -- to commit acts of terror and develop a network of terrorists here, and to use this country as a base to support the efforts of terrorists internationally," said Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.

The International Space Station is once again leaking ammonia from a cooling system, NASA said Thursday in a news release.

The crew is not in danger, NASA said.

The space station crew reported seeing small white flakes floating away from the station, the space agency said, So NASA helped locate the leak with external cameras while the crew used hand-held cameras pointed out windows.

The leak was in a cooling loop in a solar array that has leaked before. NASA said crew members tried to fix the leak in November. It is unclear whether this is the same leak or a new one.

North Korea for the first time publicly specified the "hostile acts" that landed Kenneth Bae a 15-year sentence at a labor camp.

The Korean-American tour operator set up anti-North Korean bases in China and distributed anti-regime literature, a spokesman for the North Korean Supreme Court told the state-run KCNA news agency.

"He committed such hostile acts as egging citizens of the DPRK overseas and foreigners on to perpetrate hostile acts to bring down its government while conducting a malignant smear campaign against it," the court said, using the acronym of the country's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

Evidence of chemical weapons use gets harder to find with each passing day in Syria.

The Assad regime is blocking U.N. special investigators from entering the country as the Obama administration continues to seek concrete proof.

“It is publicly known that Syria has the largest active chemical weapons program in the world," President Obama's former chief adviser on all matters relating to weapons of mass destruction, Gary Samore, told CNN's Christiane Amanpour on Wednesday.

The only other country that might have a comparable stockpile might be North Korea, about which we know very little, according to Samore.

The website for the Washington State court system has been hacked and up to 160,000 Social Security numbers and a million driver's license numbers may have been accessed, officials said on Thursday.

The disclosure, which follows a number of major hacking incidents in recent years that have targeted a range of companies from Twitter to Apple Inc, raises concerns that the information accessed could be used to commit financial fraud.

The breach was discovered in February, and officials at first believed no confidential information had been leaked even though a large amount of data was downloaded from the website, the Washington State Administrative Office of the Courts said.

In one of the biggest ever bank heists, a global cyber crime ring stole $45 million from two Middle Eastern banks by hacking into their credit card processing firms and withdrawing money from ATMs in 27 countries, US prosecutors said on Thursday.

New York federal prosecutors accused eight men of allegedly forming the New York-based cell of the organization, and said seven of them have been arrested. The eighth defendant was reported to have been murdered in the Dominican Republic on April 27, according to US prosecutors.

He was allegedly a leader of the cell and reported to ringleaders believed to be outside the United States.

Chautauqua County has confirmed its first case of rabies this year, County Public Health Director Christine Schuyler announced Thursday. Schuyler said that a rabid bat was captured by a Town of Ellington resident who awoke to the animal flying around the room. Tests at the State Rabies Lab confirmed that the bat was rabid, and rabies prevention shots were ordered.

“Human contact with bats should be avoided,” Schuyler said, “and because pets are more at risk from rabid bats, all dogs, cats and ferrets more than 3 months old need to be vaccinated, as required by law, against rabies.”

A naked surfer washed up dead near a San Diego beach early Thursday with wounds consistent with a shark attack, authorities said.

The 42-year-old man, who wasn't further identified because his family hadn't been notified, appeared to have been attacked after he died under other unusual circumstances in the water — possibly suicide — said Lt. John Everhart of San Diego Lifeguard Services, who cited a preliminary medical examiner's report.

No shark sightings had been reported in the area, and officials didn't say what type of shark might have attacked the man. Everhart told reporters the body was found in shallow water about 250 yards from shore about 3:35 a.m. (6:35 a.m. ET) near Tourmaline Beach.

One of two reactors at the Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant in Southern Maryland shut down suddenly Wednesday night after an as-yet-unexplained malfunction, a Constellation spokesman said.

Unit 2 went offline at 9:47 p.m. after a shutdown of the turbine that generates electricity from the nuclear reactor, according to Kory Raftery, spokesman for the Constellation Energy Nuclear Group. Some valves feeding steam to the turbine closed unexpectedly, triggering its shutdown, Raftery explained, and that led to the reactor itself shutting down to prevent a buildup of steam pressure in its cooling system.

The reactor's automatic safety system functioned as designed, the company spokesman said, averting any danger to plant workers or the public. The unit is in "stable condition," he said, while plant personnel and federal nuclear safety regulators investigate what caused the shutdown.